Everyone in your community is buzzing about a local reproduction of a classic movie. Every conversation seems to be about this big event, it clearly has captured the heart of your people. What should a pastor do? Do you plod along preaching through your series on the Gospel of Mark or do you take a break and do a topical sermon related to this new movie that has everyone buzzing?
It wasn’t a movie—it was Handel’s Messiah—which occasioned this question in the life of John Newton. He wasn’t a book-by-book type of preacher anyway, but in 1784-1785 he decided to preach through the texts of Messiah. Here is Newton’s explanation:
I mean to lead your meditations to the language of the oratorio, and to consider in their order—if the Lord on whom our breadth depends shall be pleased to afford life, ability, and opportunity—the sublime and interesting passages of Scripture which are the basis of that admired composition.
I don’t believe Newton would have preached a series on the 50 Shades of Grey just because his community was a buzz with talks of sexuality. But he might have done a short series on the life of Noah when Russell Crowe butchered the story.
It is also informative how Newton did this. Note that while he used the oratorio as a guide of the text that he picked his sermons (and if you are following along you read a sermon on Haggai). But Newton did not center his sermons around Handel. His sermons still flowed directly from God’s Word. They were still the driving force behind what Newton preached.
I believe there is something for us to learn here. My opinion is that the best way for us to preach the whole counsel of God’s Word—and not just the whims of preacher or culture—is to go verse-by-verse and book-by-book. But I also believe there are times when we might want to do a short series, that is still expositional, on a topic that seems to have captured the hearts of our congregation.
If you do take a break from preaching verse-by-verse through a book of the Bible, don’t take a break from expository preaching. There is never a fitting time to eisegete or to have something other than what God says in His Word be the driving force behind our preaching.
Newton as he preached through Handel’s Messiah is a great example for us to follow for these little breaks.
I think one thing that helps Newton’s case here is that most, if not all, of the lyrics in The Messiah are verbatim quotes of Scripture. I wouldn’t have a problem with a pastor using the Messiah as his sermon outline for that very reason.
It’s interesting, however, that you wrote on this topic today. I belong to the Facebook page of my state’s SBC newspaper, and last night they posted an article on the Roma Downey miniseries “A.D.” that starts Sunday night, and asked if any pastors would be preaching sermons based on the miniseries. Having seen Downey’s previous attempt, “The Bible,” and knowing a few things about her errant theology, I would have a HUGE problem with a pastor basing a sermon series on that (unless it was to take each of the errors from the movie and teach why they’re wrong and what the Bible really says).